Just as they struck down all laws on abortion, the Supreme Court has done the same thing with assisted suicide. Who do these judges think they are?

There has been no referendum on this issue in Canada. It has not been an issue in an election campaign. So how is this democratic?

The NDP calling themselves the New Democratic Party of Canada is a complete sham. They don't know the meaning of the word, and they can't be trusted to represent the people if they don't know what representing means.

Even liberal England had a vigourous debate on assisted suicide and the members of the House of Parliament voted against legalizing it in their country.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

asking the question Can Catholics support Carly, meaning Carly Fiorina who is moving up quickly in the polls as a Republican possible nominee.

She is impressive. Longenecker states however that Carly, having been raised Episcopalian, is not aligned with any Christian church at the moment. But she has strong conservative values, while lacking political experience. Longenecker concludes that she would make a formidable candidate if teemed with a Catholic, and he names Rubio, Santorum, Bush or Jindal.

I have been rooting for Marco Rubio since he entered the race, and I would definitely back a Rubio/Fiorina ticket. Just making my allegiances known.

Rubio is strongly principled, and of all the candidates I think he is the one who could work best across partisan lines. Santorum and Jindal, while great guys, don't have a chance in this nomination process. And I think Jeb Bush doesn't really want to be in the race, just a feeling that I get from his lacklustre enthusiasm.

I also sense that Rubio doesn't have a huge ego problem. This can be a real obstacle for anyone in the public arena, quelling that ego that always asserts itself. I don't see that in Rubio, but I see a young fresh personality who can actually listen to other people. Not everyone can. Team him up with Fiorina as his vice, and I think they could do a great job leading the most important country in the world.

For those who don't think the US is the most important country, get over it. It is.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

I don’t want to throw in the towel or abandon all of these hopes, but 10 videos later, it appears I was overly optimistic. The polls tell us public opinion of Planned Parenthood has remained basically unchanged. Those who supported the slaughter of babies before all of this, still do. The disgraceful wimps who were too weak and selfish to have much of a perspective on the matter before all of this, still don’t. The true civil rights champions who gave voice to the voiceless and fought for life and liberty before all of this, obviously still are. There isn’t much evidence that people have crossed over from one category to another. It is a staggering and comprehensible indictment on our culture that 10 videos of abortionists chopping up and selling infants hardly moved the needle at all.

Canada is one of three nations in the world that has absolutely no law protecting pre-born children. This means that a woman can, legally, terminate a pregnancy at any point during the nine months of gestation. Until the umbilical cord is cut and that baby takes its first breath, it can be targeted for abortion.

Some people are okay with this; I think they haven't really understood what abortion is. Be that as it may, many people are not okay with this once the situation is explained to them. The majority of Canadians don't even know the current state of the law vis-a-vis abortion in Canada.

We need to bring this out into the open. That is the purpose of LifeTour - to open up the discussion about abortion, and in particular, to ask those running for political office where they stand on the issue of pre-born human rights.

Because it has been too long. All restrictions on abortion were struck down in 1988 and the judges of the Supreme Court sent the issue back to the House of Commons, telling them that they needed to enact legislation to restrict all-out abortion in Canada. That didn't happen. Mulroney tried and the effort went nowhere. And no one since then has managed to make any headway on this.

Some valiant souls are keeping this issue before Canadians. Most people simply want to say that the issue is resolved and let's move on. So the question of abortion is not on most people's radar. And in my experience, those who should be leading the discussion, i.e. our pastors and priests and leaders of the Christian community, have backed away from it because it seems to be toxic to them.

Being pro-life is something jeered at in Canada. This is not so in other Western countries; not to the extent it is in Canada. So we must do something, we cannot remain silent. One day, we will look back at this period of our history and realise that we neglected the primary human right - the right to be born.

If you live in the Halifax area, please attend this meeting of LifeTour.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Ezra Levant is facing another court case, this time because he used the word "crazy" to describe the Alberta Human Rights Commission. What have we come to in this country, that a journalist isn't allowed to use the word "crazy" to describe an institution with which he had personal experience and which really has been rather crazy?

Last week, after attending the candidates' debate in Halifax, it was evident to me that free speech doesn't exist in Canada, not the way it does in the US or even in liberal Britain. This past week, the British Parliament had a robust debate on assisted suicide and the vote came back overwhelmingly to reject it. Imagine the same situation in Canada: Justin Trudeau would tell his party members that they had to vote for such a bill, and so would Thomas Mulcair.

Last night, we had a guest over for dinner and the subject of Ezra Levant's first case before the Alberta Human Rights Commission came up. Our guest had not heard of it, and when he learned that Levant had published the Mohammed cartoons and reported the incident and was then accused of "hate speech", he agreed that he thought it was hate speech and that it could spur a violent reaction in someone. I was speechless.

Since when does relating an event and reprinting already-published cartoons become "hate speech"?

There is a blanket of silence over many issues in Canada. It is as if we have all been told that there are certain things we cannot and must not talk about. There is a tacit agreement that you shouldn't raise certain issues, that you should avoid getting any negative reactions from people, except for the ones that are politically correct.

This frustrates me no end. This is the real reason that Sun News is no longer on the air, it wasn't an issue of money as was stated. No, the real reason is that Sun News dared to discuss topics and to interview people on those topics who hold the politically incorrect view.

Just as Christie Blatchford wrote recently about Linda Gibbons: they "are on the wrong side of the wrong issue".

We need politicians who will dare to speak on topics that have been sidelined, who will dare to make statements that get a strong negative reaction, and they need to be well-prepared so that they can flatten the opposition to their remarks with their fool-proof logic. The logic is there on those issues, and people can be trained to use it. Where are those people? Let's encourage them to come forward and then let's support them with our money so that they can get into positions of power where their voice can be heard.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Last night, I attended an all-candidates' debate on the subject of women's issues. In October, Canadians will be going out to vote for our next federal government and this debate was scheduled to showcase the candidates running for election in the riding of Halifax city.

Megan Leslie is the NDP candidate and the sitting MP since 2008, I believe. Halifax is an NDP (New Democratic Party) stronghold. Andy Fillmore is running for the Liberals; Thomas Trappenberg for the Green Party, Irvine Carvery for the Conservatives (Carvery could not attend the debate) and Allan Bezanson for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

The debate consisted of a moderator asking questions of the candidates; they had 2 minutes to respond and anyone who wished to rebut had one minute to do so. It was a lively debate and quite interesting actually. But a few impressions emerged for me.

The sameness of the promises: each candidate seemed to promise more money for women's shelters, more money to help women leave abusive situations, more money for abused women to access childcare and education/job training. In general, the solutions were always more money thrown at the problem.

Upon reflection on this, I was struck by the fact that this is a Band-Aid solution. Not one single candidate spoke of why women are in abusive situations to begin with, or how to solve the problem of abusive men. This makes me think of the ongoing discussion on Fox News where the equivalent American problem seems to be violence against the police and the issue of black on black violence.
Whereas anchors like Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly ask the question: "what is causing the violence in the black community?" , no one here in Canada asks the question: "why are so many women caught in abusive relationships and why are so many men abusive?"

Shouldn't this be the issue? My reasoning is that they can't raise the question because it will bring up the problem of moral values, i.e. the ones we have lost in society. And once again, political correctness raises its ugly ubiquitous head. You can't speak of anything that might sound like a judgment on people's morality.

On another issue, all of the candidates supported free tuition for university students. The question that bubbled up in my mind was "where is all this money going to come from?" At one point, Megan Leslie said "Canada can afford it" when she was speaking of affordable housing as a right for all individuals. She said the same for a $15 minimum hourly wage.

At least, Fillmore rebutted with her on the wage question by pointing out that the NDP plan to put in a minimum wage of $15 would only apply to federal employees, not to people who work at Walmart or Tim Hortons. And that would only be 1% of the total population of working people, or 55,000 people which he said was the attendance at three Moosehead games. I couldn't help letting out a big laugh at that one. Good for him; expose the illusion.

I am not Liberal, by any stretch of the imagination. But Fillmore had another rebuttal to Megan Leslie that made me guffaw. When Leslie stated that the NDP party would bring in $15 per day day-care for all working mothers, Fillmore clarified the issue by stating that their plan would take eight years to implement. "So if you are a parent of a toddler now, or you are thinking about having a child, this will not be of any use to you", Fillmore said. Leslie did not reply to that remark.

Money was the solution for most of the candidates. Well except for the Marxist-Leninist candidate who used all his speaking time to rally the anti-war effort and to blackball anything capitalist. I wanted to ask him to name one single Communist country that was an example for the world to follow. Just name one. Rather, the Marxist-Leninist legacy is one of injustices, abuses, and mass death. I do not understand how anyone could be a Marxist-Leninist, knowing the least bit of history about Stalin and Mao. Mr Bezanson would use his compassionate sympathies far better working one-on-one in the community. Perhaps he does already, but making Communism your platform is just insane given history.

One question I really wanted to ask the candidates was one about demography. With the birth rate at 1.6 children per woman in Canada, we are not even replacing ourselves. How do any of these candidates think that we are going to be able to pay for the free tuition, the pension plans, the affordable housing for all those in need with a shrinking tax base? This never even enters the discussion, but it seems that it is rather critical to consider.

All of our entitlements are paid for by taxation. Unless we are willing to pay higher and higher taxes, (and Canadians currently pay a high tax rate compared to many other countries) how can we offer any of these entitlements to anyone?

The moderator took questions from the audience, but these were written questions and three were pulled out of a hat. That's what they said anyway. The first question was on abortion. Of course, the question had to do with PEI not allowing abortion in that province, to which Leslie said "get on board, PEI". The audience cheered and clapped. It was obvious the majority were strongly pro-choice.

And that was the overall impression of the debate and of those who attended. Sameness of opinion, they were all of the same mind. There was not one single person who raised an issue that might bring out a heckler. They were all trying to appease the voters. As one of my friends said, they have all been indoctrinated by the education system into thinking this way.

No wonder Irvine Carvery was a no-show. He would have been castigated for any right-wing views that he held. And in his absence, there were many calls to get rid of Stephen Harper.

A sorry state of affairs. And once again, I am left wondering who the heck can I vote for?

When Kim Davis was put in jail for refusing to sign marriage licenses to gay couples, Governor Mike Huckabee and Senator Ted Cruz came to her defense. Huckabee even said he would go to jail in her place if he could.

So where is Canada's Mike Huckabee?

Not a peep from a single politician about Linda Gibbons who has spent more than 10 years in jail for peacefully protesting abortion. And now a Calgary bus driver has been fired because he said he would not drive a city bus that advertised the Calgary "gay pride" event.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. We are going to see more and more stories like this as the gay agenda will not tolerate dissent from their ideology.

However, Christianity actually thrives and grows under persecution. And the more people we see persecuted for their beliefs, the stronger the Christian community will become. Smaller perhaps, but those who stand firm will be stronger. Bring it on!

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

There was an uproar in Halifax during the month of August, which I missed, being away on vacation. I might have missed it entirely were it not for getting my hair cut yesterday.

My hairdresser is the wife of the artist, Zeqirja Rexhepi. Rexhepi is a refugee who came to Canada from Kosovo more than fifteen years ago, and the Tall Ships mural at the corner of George and Barrington Streets was one of his first commissions here in Canada. Rexhepi is an accomplished artist with degrees in art; he is not just another "street artist". He has made his living from his art for his entire working life, and has supported his wife and family of six children with his painting.

But the story of painting over the Tall Ships mural has been given short shrift. The mural was commissioned by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission and they were helped by a grant from the city. It was commissioned to commemorate the historic visit of nearly 100 "tall ships" to Halifax Harbour in the summer of 2000. I remember that visit well; dozens of magnificent ships sailed into the harbour, giving the onlooker the sense that we were suddenly eye-witnesses to something from the past. I believe that close to a million visitors walked the waterfront that summer in order to see the ships.

Freak Lunchbox, a business that resides in the building where the mural is displayed, wanted to put up a new piece of art in its place. They felt that the mural was outdated and they wanted something fresh that fit with their business, which is a candy store. From all accounts that I could find, they tried to contact the painter of the mural in the hope that Rexhepi would arrange for moving the mural (which is painted on boards, not on the actual brick wall of the building). They could not reach him, so they went ahead with their plans which were to paint over the mural in black before a new mural could be painted. They had made arrangements with a Montreal artist who was scheduled to fly in and paint the new mural. This entailed the leasing of staging and equipment and I think it also involved hiring other people besides the painter.

The Friday before this was to happen, the daughter of Rexhepi contacted Erin and Jeremy Smith, owners of Freak Lunchbox and asked that they be given a few more days so that the Rexhepi family could remove the mural and have it placed elsewhere. She was told that they were "too late", that the painter was on a tight schedule, his flight and hotel had been booked, that equipment had been leased, etc and that they were going to go ahead with their new plans.

As related to me by the painter's wife, this is what they arrived to see on that fateful morning.

The account seems fairly clear from the various news reports that I read. A company in Dartmouth had agreed to help move the mural, but then they realised the cost of erecting it somewhere else was beyond their means. A GoFundMe account had been set up but it hadn't reached the required $3500 to move the mural. The Rexhepis were prepared to undertake removal themselves but their offer came "too late". The Smiths, owners of Freak Lunchbox, said that they had waited three weeks for a reply from the Rexhepis and hadn't received one.

There is so much more to this story than is being told. And I don't claim to have the whole story either. But from what I could get from Rexhepi's wife, there is a story of heartbreak here that isn't being told.

Zeqirja Rexhepi was an artist in Kosovo who saw his works slashed by soldiers as they tore his country apart in a civil war. And he and his family were displaced, arriving in Canada, with a flood of refugees seeking asylum from their war-torn country. When they arrived in Canada with five of their children, they couldn't even speak English and had to make their way, both of them being self-employed and without much to start up a new life. But they survived.

The Tall Ships was one of the first commissions that Rexhepi got in Canada. He has since done many more murals, but this one is of particular significance to him. Not to mention the fact that the Tall Ships mural has been a wonderful tourist attraction to many visitors to Halifax and a beautiful memory to the residents of Halifax of that wonderful summer of 2000 when our harbour was graced with the beautiful ships from antiquity.

But antiquity and the past, history, memories don't seem to carry much weight in this new scenario. Now it is about "street art" and putting up something "more relevant" to the people who pass by on Barrington Street. It would seem that a mural commemorating a historical event in the life of Halifax doesn't matter as much as having some eye-popping piece of modern art. I wonder how many people take photos of this new mural, compared to the number who took photos of the Tall Ships one?

Or how many will email the artist to tell him that his mural was a highlight of their visit to Halifax and to thank him for his work? Zeqirja has many of those, but now they hurt instead of bringing joy as they did in the past.

What I want to ask is did the Smiths, owners of Freak Lunchbox, take the time to learn the backstory of the Tall Ships mural? Did they meet with the artist to talk with him about his work and to see if they could come to some sort of agreement? Or did they simply email and then forge ahead with their plans, when they didn't get the response they felt entitled to? Could they not have realised that the artist might have been in shock at news of their plans? Or that he was subdued into silence as he realised that he simply did not have the money or the means to move the mural himself? That he felt helpless, as indeed he was.

Where was the city of Halifax in this, asks Rexhepi's wife? Why did no one come forward to help? Fighting back tears, she said to me "we left Kosovo because of war; now we see there is war here, but it is a silent one." As refugees, the Rexhepis feel betrayed by their new country. They feel that the original welcome they were given has been retracted. They do not feel welcome any longer.

All because someone thought Rexhepi's art was outdated and should be replaced by something that they preferred. They didn't even ask Haligonians what they wanted. Surely a piece of art like the Tall Ships mural had become a landmark in the city and the residents should have been asked for their input. There is so much more to this story than the simple ownership of a building and the right to do whatever you want with it. Surely some consideration should have been given to the artist and the spirit of gratitude and love that he expressed in his painting towards his newly adopted home.

It pains me to think of this. I could only sense a fraction of the pain of this family as Bea related the story to me. She told me of the comments on Facebook and Twitter about this, most of them full of swear words and supporting the painting of the new mural. She told me, I don't want to hear people say "f..... the Tall Ships" nor does she want to hear her friends say "f.... Freak Lunchbox". With tears in her eyes, she told me that they had left a country ripped apart by war, that it is love and support that matter most to her people, that she doesn't want anyone to be fighting over her husband's art, but that she feels the love and support they once felt in this city have been ripped out from under them.

Ripped apart by someone else's determination that they have a right to do whatever they want with their property, that they can put up whatever artwork they like, that it doesn't matter if many people loved the mural that was there. It is over, it is dated, it is the past, let's move on, nothing to see here as the saying goes.

But I give you exhibit A

and I give you exhibit B

And I ask you: which mural will be remembered 10, 20 years from now?

And who will remember Zeqirja Rexhepi and his wife and the artist's joy at being selected to paint this historic mural, a decision that gave him the approval he was seeking in his new life in Canada?
Surely the tears of his wife tell a story of betrayal, of injustice that must be corrected in some way by all of us who once welcomed them here fifteen years ago.

Saturday, September 5, 2015

She’s a veteran pro-life protester outside Toronto abortion clinics. She’s on the wrong side (the pro-life side) of the wrong issue (abortion) and yet she persists in trying to make her voice heard.

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Yet she looked so alone in the back of that squad car. How is it that she can be so harshly punished simply for exercising freedom of expression?
Oh yes, because in this country, when people disapprove of what you say, they will criminalize the speech. It’s not quite Voltaire, is it?